At this moment in history the broad, toiling masses in every country have for the first time the opportunity of a fuller and less burdened life. Science is at hand to spread a more bountiful table than has ever been offered to the millions and to the tens of millions. Shorter hours of labour, greater assurances against individual misfortune: a wider if a simpler culture: a more consciously realized sense of social justice, an easier and a more equal society—these are the treasures which after all these generations and centuries of impotence and confusion, are now within the reach of mankind.
1938, 9 May. Free Trade Hall, Manchester.
(Blood, 20.)
We all speak with great respect of science. Indeed, we have to. One of my great friends, Lord Hugh Cecil, has recently defined science as organised curiosity. We must be careful not to discover too much, not to discover things of such wide implication that our immature civilisation is incapable of manipulating and employing them.
1948, 12 May. University of Oslo.
(Europe, 327.)
It is arguable whether the human race have been gainers by the march of science beyond the steam engine. Electricity opens a field of infinite conveniences to ever greater numbers, but they may well have to pay dearly for them. But anyhow in my thought I stop short of the internal combustion engine which has made the world so much smaller. Still more must we fear the consequences of entrusting to a human race so little different from their predecessors of the so-called barbarous ages such awful agencies as the atomic bomb. Give me the horse.
1951, 10 July. Royal College of Physicians, London. (Stemming, 91.)
World History
